Being Dead's Not Like it is in the Movies
by hijipine
Summary: Kotetsu dies.  Bunny loses it.  So Kotetsu tries to save him, only to find out it's tough to be a hero when you're dead.  Of course, that doesn't stop him.  Kotetsu/Bunny.


Disclaimer: I make no profit from this story.

**Being Dead Isn't Like it is in the Movies**

Kotetsu knew something was wrong when his heart started pounding too fast.

Ignoring it, he swung at the bank robber in front of him, smug as hell when the bastard flew through the air to hit the back of the vault and fall unconscious to the floor in a flutter of paper bills. He whirled to see how Bunny was doing with the two robbers wielding bazookas-

Except, he didn't whirl. He sort of staggered, his heart pounding harder, then fell on his ass as his legs gave out under him. "What the..?" He blinked hard; everything looked red. "Bunny?"

His chest hurt. Bad. Real bad. Had the damned robber managed to shoot him or something?

No. The guy hadn't had a gun. That couldn't be it.

The counter in his visor timed out at five minutes and kept going, which was weird, since it had been months since his power had lasted a full five minutes, and it had never, ever gone longer, but right now he could still feel it flickering through his body. Okay, so what was going on? Was he going to be the wonky one, the one in the process of losing his powers like Mr. Legend had, only to, like, get super-charged or something instead? What if his power never turned off? He'd go _broke_ from the property damage claims. "Bunny!"

Wait. When had he ended up lying on the floor?

Fuck. Anthony would never let him live it down if he'd managed to get himself fucking killed on the job. Not that he had, of course. The robber had gone down without firing a shot, so there was no way he was dying, because a hero didn't die just from clobbering a criminal. If they did, there wouldn't be many heroes left around then, would there?

So he was fine, really, just something was going bonkers. He hoped like hell it wasn't him, because he'd never live that down, either, though he admitted to himself that he'd had plenty of practice.

The pain became so bad it almost felt like it was disappearing, his tolerance threshold reached and exceeded to the point that it couldn't really register any more, his heart pounding so damned hard he wouldn't be surprised to see his armor dent from the inside. He pressed his hand against his chest, but his armor was tougher than he gave it credit for, because he couldn't feel a damned thing.

He must have blacked out for a second, because suddenly his mask was gone and Bunny was there, his mask lifted so that Kotetsu could make out his face and a few soft golden curls. It was hard to see through the red, but Bunny was saying something.

"Stop whispering," Kotetsu demanded, annoyed.

Suddenly, everything stopped: the pain, the thudding, the red vision, the roaring that he hadn't noticed but that must have drowned out Bunny's shouts, because he _was_ shouting, "-amn it, old man! Hang on! An ambulance is on the way!"

Kotetsu relaxed and grinned. He'd never seen Bunny look so panicked before. Huh. The guy must really be worried. It made him feel warm inside. Bunny never worried about anyone else. It was pretty cool that he worried about him. "Hey," Kotetsu said, "thanks-"

_for worrying_, he meant, but things went black.

xoOoOoOox

He was pissed as hell at himself when he realized that he was, in fact, dead. He figured his only excuse for not realizing he _had_ been dying was that he hadn't ever really, you know,_ died_ before, so it wasn't like he knew what it was going to be like.

Still, he felt pretty damned stupid.

xoOoOoOox

Kotetsu had always figured his biggest regret about being dead would be that he had never been a good enough dad to Kaede. Not in the caring department or anything – he loved her like whoa, she was his most precious person – but in the 'being there when she needed him' department.

Watching her at his funeral, though, he realized that he must have been a better dad than he'd thought, because even though she was pretty broken up, he was happy to see that she was handling it as well as could be expected. Much better than he'd handled Tomoe's death, that was for sure, but then, Kaede had always been strong – she took after Tomoe more than him where that was concerned. In fact, she seemed almost proud of him, now that she knew he was a hero and all and had died saving people. Or, well, money, he supposed, but it was the principle of the thing that mattered. He was glad he'd been able to give that secret to her when she needed it now, and not to have cheapened the gift by giving it to her while he'd been alive. That would only have been selfish, almost as if he would have told her he was a hero so that he'd look better to her than a dad had the right to look.

So, while he really,_ really_ felt bad about the 'not being there' thing with Kaede, it turned out not to be a huge regret because he actually, weirdly, _was_ there for her now in a way he hadn't been before, and it was all okay. Sad, full of hurt and loss and 'damn-I-wish'es, but okay.

No, it turned out his greatest regret _should_ have been leaving Bunny.

Because Bunny was losing it. Big time.

Which was why Kotetsu's body was stored in some fucking cryogenic chamber for fucking eternity, and why he was standing, metaphysical arms crossed and tapping his non-existent foot, while Bunny paced the length of his empty, featureless-but-so-fucking-modern-it-_hurt_ apartment and sent icicle glares at the image on his vid-phone.

"I told you to sell everything. All of the stocks, all of the bonds, all of the property – everything. I need cash."

"You need a lobotomy," Kotetsu muttered. "If I'd known you were this stupid, I'd have kicked your ass harder while I was alive."

The man on the vid-phone looked like he agreed with Kotetsu. "Your parents' work will be destroyed!"

"I don't _care_," Bunny snarled. "And while you're at it, pull every string you can to secure more government funding. I'm taking over the labs, and we're changing the focus of our robotics research. I want to develop a robot that can serve as a host for a resuscitated human."

"Thanks a lot," Kotetsu said, wincing. "'Resuscitated human'. Not how I'd really wanted to be remembered, you know."

"Barnaby," the money-guy on the vid-phone looked frantic, "we have commitments! We can't just change our research focus on a whim! Think of all of the money we'd have to return to our current funders!"

Bunny paused. "All right," he finally said. "But I want all non-essential resources diverted to the new project immediately."

The man on the vid-phone sighed. "I'll get on it right away."

The connection winked out and Bunny threw himself into his recliner, staring out at the sun setting over Sternbild. "I'll save you yet, you idiot," he whispered.

Kotetsu snorted. "I'd like to point out that I'm not the idiot in this room. And I should know. I'm an expert."

xoOoOoOox

The 'resuscitated human robot body' research wasn't going well, Kotetsu was tired of knowing his _real_ body was nothing but one big popsicle, and Bunny was losing weight, looked like shit and was going to fucking get himself killed one of these days with the way he was leaving himself wide open when he was fighting criminals. Luckily, the criminals he was fighting were worse than Bunny, otherwise Kotetsu suspected that he and Bunny would be reunited a hell of a lot quicker than Kotetsu wanted to be.

Not that he didn't want to be with Bunny. He did, especially at night when Bunny was lying awake and staring into the dark and not wearing anything but his sadness, and who knew Bunny was so well-hung, anyway? But really, he'd prefer Bunny to be doing something with his dick, not throwing it away along with the rest of himself.

(Though, yeah, Kotetsu figured that in eighty years or so, when Bunny checked out at the proper time, he'd buy the guy an imaginary drink or two and try his best to get in Bunny's pants and have some ghost-sex, because the guy was packing and he made Kotetsu's mouth feel like it was watering, even when it couldn't.)

But eighty years wasn't_ now_, so something obviously had to be done pretty quickly if Bunny was going to make it that long. The thing was, what?

Kotetsu replayed every horror and science fiction movie he'd ever seen, a dozen times in his head, but none of them gave him the answers that he'd hoped for. _Ghost_ maybe, but when he tried some of the things out, he realized that the director had been talking out of his ass, because going through a closed door wasn't anything like the movie made it out to be, and aluminum cans just stayed where they were no matter how hard he emoted and kicked at them.

He tried bonding with a computer, like in _The Matrix_, but he only got a headache and a fuzzy feeling in his stomach that made him suspect he'd have been puking his guts out if he had guts to puke.

He hung out around a few self-proclaimed mediums, but it looked like _The Sixth Sense_ was pretty much hokum, too. Even the mediums who were kids sucked.

He tried possessing people, then possessing objects, then looking for other spirits to possess, then looking for other spirits to _pay_ to possess, then possessing cats, dogs, pigeons, rats and the one freaked-out squirrel monkey he came across in some rich girl's purse, but none of it worked. He debated going to the zoo or a mental institution and trolling for possessable bodies there, but delegated those to the bottom of his list as last-ditch efforts if he couldn't find another way, because he really wasn't all that sure that he could get Bunny to believe that it was really him if he showed up as a giraffe or a wigged-out mass murderer.

"You wouldn't believe how fucking hard it is to try to communicate when you're a ghost," he told Bunny one night. He'd taken to giving him daily reports on his progress, not because Bunny could hear him or anything, but just because it made him feel a little better, like he wasn't giving up. "With people who are alive, I mean, not with other ghosts. They're pretty easy to talk to. You know, there aren't as many as I thought there'd be, and most of them are really pretty boring. Not scary, like the movies. More sad, like. Hey, Bunny, I never asked you! What kind of movies do you like? Aw, shit, how stupid was I back then, huh? We could have hung out and watched movies together, bonded, you know?"

"Ninja movies," Bunny said, idling pressing a button on his remote. _Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles_ appeared on the huge screen in front of him, and he frowned. "What the hell?"

"Whoa," Kotetsu said.

xoOoOoOox

Kotetsu stopped wandering Sternbild and started haunting Bunny's every step.

"Ice cream," he said.

Bunny shivered and bought an ice cream bar from the vending machine. He stared at it in bewilderment, then threw it in the trash. "I don't even like ice cream," he muttered.

Kotetsu smiled.

xoOoOoOox

"Flower," Kotetsu said.

Bunny plucked a carnation from one of Blue Rose's many arrangements and tucked it through the buttonhole in his shirt pocket.

"You could have asked me for it first," Karina said indignantly.

xoOoOoOox

His real breakthrough came about through his horniness. Which, Kotetsu supposed, he shouldn't have been surprised by, given how strong his libido remained even after he was dead.

Especially when he was around Bunny.

xoOoOoOox

"Touch yourself," Kotetsu murmured.

Bunny had already taken off his clothes, pulled out a bottle of lubricant (strawberry, which Kotetsu wished he could taste, because, damn, he liked strawberries), and laid back on his bed, all in accordance with Kotetsu's directions.

Bunny squirted some lube into his hand and smeared it along the length of his erection.

"Think of me," Kotetsu said.

"Kotetsu," Bunny whispered as he began to stroke himself.

"Pretend I'm sucking you."

Bunny groaned. "Your mouth is so hot."

"God, Bunny, you're so beautiful." Kotetsu felt heat flow through him; he didn't even have to touch himself, sex as a ghost was like being on the brink of the best damned orgasm ever, without the falling-over-the-edge-and-having-it-end part. "I want you so bad."

"I want you, old man." Bunny stroked and arched his back. "I've wanted you for so long."

"You should have said something." Kotetsu brushed a finger along Bunny's cock, and Bunny groaned. "I would have slept with you. Honest."

"Too late."

"No. No, it's not." Kotetsu crawled onto the bed and stretched over Bunny's body. "You want me to fuck you?"

"Yeah," Bunny said, his eyes closed. "Fuck me. Please, Kotetsu."

Kotetsu groaned and his clothing disappeared. He rubbed his dick along the crease between Bunny's thigh and abdomen. "Bunny."

"Love you," Bunny whispered. He shuddered and arched again. "So much. Don't leave me."

"I won't," Kotetsu promised. "Tell me if this hurts." He pushed two fingers into Bunny's hole. He could almost, but not quite, feel Bunny clench around them.

Bunny tossed his head. "More."

"Okay." Kotetsu pushed at Bunny's hips, and Bunny tilted his ass in the air. "God," Kotetsu moaned as he slid in, the almost-feel of the act nowhere nearly as intense as the thought that he was having sex with his prickly partner. "Bunny!"

"Uh," Bunny said, then, "fu-, ah, yeah. iMore/i!"

Kotetsu set a slow pace, trying to get used to the way he was pressing into Bunny, Bunny all around him, almost _inside_ him, but he picked up speed when Bunny huffed impatiently and his inner muscles seemed to pull Kotetsu deeper. Panting, he filled Bunny again and again, snapping his hips forward and grunting with each thrust, Bunny breathless beneath him and jerking on his cock with frantic twists of his wrist.

When Bunny came, so did Kotetsu, a deep outpouring of love and lust instead of come, while Bunny spurted into the air.

Bunny opened his eyes. They widened with shock. "Kotetsu!"

"Bunny," Kotetsu whimpered, pressing into him. "So good! I fucking love you, you bastard!"

"Kotetsu!" Bunny said again and scrambled backward and away, and this time the fear got through to Kotetsu.

"Wait! Bunny-!"

"What the hell!" Bunny shouted. "You idiot! You're dead!"

"Yeah," Kotetsu said, spreading his arms while his phantom cock deflated like a stuck balloon. "But it's okay, really."

"We just fucked!"

Bunny seemed a little stuck on the obvious. "Yeah," Kotetsu repeated. "It was good, right? I didn't hurt you, did I?"

"You're dead!" Bunny pointed out again, his voice frantic.

"We covered that already," Kotetsu reminded him. "Just... tell me I didn't hurt you, okay?"

"You _did_ fucking hurt me, you fucking bastard!" Tears welled in Bunny's eyes. One slid down his cheek.

"Oh, fuck," Kotetsu said. "I'm so sorry. I tried to be carefu-"

"You fucking_ left_ me!"

"Oh." Kotetsu felt stupid. "Um. I thought you meant-"

"I know what you thought!" Bunny grabbed his glasses from the nightstand and jammed them on his face. "You're _dead_!"

Kotetsu waved his arms in a 'stop' motion. "You're really stuck on that, aren't you? It's not what you think. It's okay, really!"

"No, it's not 'okay'!" Bunny closed his eyes and threw an arm over his face. "It's not okay at all!"

"Oh, Bunny. Please don't cry. I'm here," Kotetsu said, crawling up the bed.

"No, you're not," Bunny said, his voice thick and hopeless. "I'm going crazy, aren't I?"

"No, you're not." Kotetsu carefully pulled Bunny into his arms and cradled his head against his chest. "I didn't mean to scare you. I've just been trying to talk to you, that's all."

"Talking? Try _'fucking'_!"

"Well, yeah, that, too." Kotetsu petted Bunny's hair. "Bunny?"

"Yeah."

"Are you maybe just a _little_ glad to see me?"

Bunny pulled away, his eyes red but no more tears falling. He frowned. "Kotetsu? Is it really you?"

Kotetsu nodded.

"Then," Bunny said, drawing a shaky breath, "yeah. Yeah. I'm a little glad to see you."

"Great!" Kotetsu hadn't realized just how unhappy he'd been until happiness flooded through him at Bunny's words, which he'd probably never have heard if he'd been alive, because Bunny just didn't say things like that. "Because you've been shit-assed stupid about the whole freezing my body thing!"

It appeared from Bunny's expression that Kotetsu was just as bad at putting his foot in his mouth when he was dead as he'd been while he'd been alive.

"No, really," Kotetsu insisted. "Just thaw me out and bury me already!"

"Not when I have the chance to bring you back," Bunny snapped, pulling further away.

"I'm dead, Bunny!"

"Only technically!"

"No, I'm really dead. Trust me on it."

Bunny shook his head and glared. "I don't accept that. Do you know what it's like being out there without a partner?"

"Well, yeah," Kotetsu said, because, hell, he hadn't had a partner for most of his career, not until Bunny. "It sucks."

"You're damned right, it sucks." The fight suddenly seemed to go out of Bunny, and he leaned heavily into Kotetsu's embrace again. "Are you going to leave me again?" he whispered, his face half-buried in Kotetsu's non-existent chest.

"No," Kotetsu told Bunny's hair. He carefully wrapped his arms around Bunny again. "If you want me to stay, I won't leave you. But I won't ever be alive again. Will you please pull the plug on me?"

Bunny hesitated.

"Please, Bunny," Kotetsu whispered. "It's killing you, and that kills me, too."

Bunny swallowed hard and finally nodded his head. "But you have to stay with me."

"I will. Promise."

xoOoOoOox

The other heroes shied away from Bunny at first, but seemed to get used to hearing Bunny talk to Kotetsu more quickly than Kotetsu figured they would, considering the fact that Bunny probably sounded absolutely shit-assed crazy to them.

"Punch his face in," Kotetsu shouted. "Now, Bunny!"

"Don't tell me how to fight!" Bunny shouted back, kicking the kidnapper in the jaw.

"I didn't say 'kick him'!"

"I'll kick someone when I want to kick someone!"

"Uh, he's down," Sky High pointed out as he landed next to them.

"Because I kicked him," Bunny said.

"Punching him would have been quicker," Kotetsu sulked.

"No, it wouldn't have been."

Keith winced. "I'll just call the police, shall I?"

"You do that," Kotetsu and Bunny said together. They blinked at each other, then grinned.

"You did good, partner," Kotetsu said as Keith cautiously sidled away. "You were right to kick him, I guess."

Bunny smiled, a twist of his lips that didn't hide all of his condescension. "Hitting him would have worked, too, I suppose." His smile relaxed into something more natural. "Kotetsu?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm really glad you're my partner."

"Me, too," Kotetsu said. And he really was, no matter how annoying Bunny was. Because, well, Bunny could be really fucking annoying. But... "Just don't get yourself killed."

"Love you, too," Bunny whispered.

_fin_


End file.
